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Free Haiti, July: It is easy to believe in spirits in the mountains of Haiti, when thesounds that cannot be birds yet should not be trees echo through the night air Even a trained ear finds the to voudouists, waterfalls and streams are favorite haunts of the spirits When you co down a rocky cliff like a splashing staircase, you get the feeling of being the first to lay eyes on it since the forine it consecrated by apparitions dancing in the onfly with a hand-size wingspan whirs by or a parade of ants crosses a root in a chitin stream, and the spell is broken The forest is just a forest, and the water is just water again-until later, when the body is elsewhere and the beauty of the place weaves its ination
The Roots rejoiced at the return of her warriors in sacred ceremony and profane revelry
Valentine watched the sacred portion fro at his fraathered at a waterfall in the forested hills, led in singing by their priests Narcisse sat on a rock in the swirling waters at the base of the waterfall, like the statue of the littlethedip in the river Other voudouists escorted
the supplicants into the water, or sang hosannas in the background Part baptism, part absolution, and part bath, the ritual moved Valentine There was none of the solemnity of Father Max&039;s traditional Catholic cereed each other through catcalls
The Grogs sat high on the hillside, chewing fruit and watching the hu Further above, Ahn-Kha stood sentinel with crossbow and gun, a watchful set of eyes allowing the humans to relax below
Valentine, by nature an observer rather than a participant at this sort of display, sat on his rock with Carrasca resting on a patch of grass beside hileaht have thought the whole performance silly aniinning his journeys to laugh anything off He applauded when Monte-Cristi waded into the streah concern over his frailty or giving the spirits aed hero was the last of the spiritual bathers Some of the Thunderbolt&039;s sailors and h the cere and beckoned Valentine to join him
"C&039;le"
Valentine and Carrasca exchanged shrugs, and he stripped to applause from all A few pointed at the white pock left by the old bullet wound on his leg
Narcisse laid her hands on hi that sounded like mixed French and Latin He lowered himself at her command to hoots of approval
"I knew you had a strong ti-bon-ange, un himself told me so just now," Narcisse affirthened or healed He waded back
to the shore He reached for his clothes, but Carrasca snatched theh yet Do you see anyone else getting dressed?"
There werewarriors lined up to walk naked back to the village Valentine joined in the lines The Grogs scrambled down from their rocky balconies to follow
"How&039;d you get the leg wound?" Carrasca asked, falling into step next to hi like a damn fool"
"A damn fool who saved my people," Ahn-Kha added from behind
"Your people saved theo I&039;ll take sea duty any time Fewer forty-mile days"
"You&039;d cover forty miles in a day? On horseback?" Carrasca asked
"On foot It was common in the Wolves We weren&039;t so special Two hundred years ago, Zulu armies in Africa could run fifty in a day And they weren&039;t even trained by the Lifeweavers"
They cae near the spirit-spot, a trailside cluster of shacks painted and decorated in bright colors Dancing red figures, green snakes, blue birds, and less recognizable patterns wound around doorframes, roofs and s in the Haitian style Tables and barrels heaped with food and drink stood in the doorways and alleys; s and ancient plastic pails, calling all together The spectators ate and drank with enthusiasm Handsome Haitian women poured rum and juice into wooden tumblers, which were emptied as quickly as they could be filled
Just outside the village a rivulet eht thean to shout imprecations to Haiti&039;s eneh to know he called on the
warriors to be armed and shielded in new spirit Monte-Cristi yelled a response and belly-flopped into the mud; he rolled around until he ell coated His o into a cool
"Go on, boy," Narcisse said "Take on Ogun&039;s arun&039;s arood He stuck a foot in thebetween the toes
Post gave him a shove Valentine fell into Napoleon&039;s fifth element facefirst, rolled over, and let out a whoop
"Thunderbolt!" he called
The men shouted the name of their ship and dived in with the Haitians Soon it was al skin, for that rayish plaster
Valentine, grinning behind acrouch
"Oh, no!" she said, backing away "I&039;ll never get it out ofbeside her before she had tied her, shrieking and kicking, into the mud He flopped into the morass, and she landed astride hi a wet handful of soil down at him "At least you were undressed"
"I&039;ll wash them myself"
Valentine watched her bind her partially despoiled hair up in a bandanna, and pull off her shirt with ers Her shorts followed She pinned him into the ith a knee, her eyes wide and hot He felt her take his head in her hands and she kissed hih to squeeze mud out from the join where their bodies met When she caray coating
Sailors,wo the all the tiht as the men planted muddy kisses on flushed cheeks, necks, and breasts
Valentine rolled Carrasca over and kissed her, and then she returned the ain She looked around at thelove
"You&039;ve started an orgy, Captain," she said "I don&039;t knohat I think about an officer that lets his et out of hand like this"
Valentine cupped her buttocks "I&039;ll let the else at the moment"
"Is that some kind of crack?"
He explored further with his fingers "No, but this is"
She giggled an un-captainish giggle "Another bad joke like that and a certain et his brains fucked out momentarily"
"We&039;ll talk some more in the bushes" Valentine picked hiue&039;s going to be busy elsewhere"
He slapped her mud-covered buttock and followed her into the forest, first running and then walking, until they splashed across the strea, a field next to an abandoned hut, perhaps a forrasses and palmettos had supplanted the rich soil&039;s food crops Valentine was in no lade, especially with Carrasca exploring his hardness fro rod to find a spot to ues exploring one another&039;s mouths
He found mudless patches of her body to kiss, and explored the rest of her coated skin with his hands "Val," she began, and then trailed off into a Spanish-English rew more and more feral as he pressed her into his ar her and running his hands up and down her body, lingering at her inner thighs His ain took his head in her hands; she
pressed her mons up to his mouth The salty-sweet feminine musk hardened him beyond self-control, and he rose up fros
He felt her open for hi inside her warrew contorted as he moved in her, ever deeper and faster as their passion waxed She raked at his back with her nails, sending chips of driedwith ten tiny chisels He shut his eyes, lost in his own sensations yet still aware of her He felt an irresistible, toboggan-ride rush of pleasure, and the draining spasms came
They drowsed away a fewas if joined by a low voltage circuit
"Another kick in the teeth," he rass beneath his back
"Huh?"
"For Death There&039;s more than one way to strike a blow for life"
She furrowed her brows, and then evidently gave up trying to figure out what he was talking about Her hand explored him
"Blow for lifeand they say men don&039;t come with instructions"
She ue and mouth, passionately applied, worked a resurrection
"That&039;s the spirit," she said, straddling hi up for ratitude when it came time to fill the Thunderbolt with quickwood and provisions Ahn-Kha and his Grogs supervised the cutting and ths Sently extracted by shovel, placed in clay cauldrons or wrapped in layers of dirt and burlap, and ported down to the beach one at a tiave the entire ship&039;s crew each a
leather tobacco pouch with a handful of seeds for new quickwood trees
"Kur is a dry place," the renegade said when Valentine asked about the seeds "These will remain dormant for years if kept out of your sun, until placed in roly, so have patience Let the wood mature, and take only branches if you must"
"We&039;ll see that they end up in the right hands," Valentine proroves yourself"
"No, I&039;ll stay in the warardens In a cold climate, I doubt I could survive a winter without a different s"
"You still do not understand, do you, Valentine? It is the sapient ives us the kind of vital aura infusion that truly satisfies Each aura has a different flavor: ahideous tortures, a wo, a terrified child taken in the night all have a distinct feel when absorbed The &039;rush&039; as you ht call it varies- an aura can be consumed in the time it takes to scream, or over the course of many painful hours There were times when my-"
"Point taken," Valentine said, instinctively balling his fists
"I forget my manners Would one discuss cuts of ive me, son of mine enemy"
Valentine relaxed, but wanted to end the interview "Perhaps when I&039;, I&039;ll come back to the islands" He lare of the sand, and she cupped the leather pouch suggestively "I&039;d like to hear more about Kur, and the other planets in the Interworld Tree"
"A strong rows frail," the Once-ler of reed "May fortune ith you, for you&039;ll walk into many lands bereft of it" He
waved in his weary fashion and let his bearers carry him off &039;The debt is paid," Valentine heard him say
At the timatic Kurian It would be years before Valentine learned its significance
He took his leave of Monte-Cristi, sitting at the edge of the beach in a ha himself
"Did the river and mud cure take, Jacques?"
"Not as ifted woe You ise to offer her a trip north, it is soe fros at the Cape They&039;ve fixed the holes in that old submarine I wouldn&039;t be surprised if your ene, he ans have trouble keeping the last road along the north coast open, with these new guns the Roots have been shooting up their convoys He senses a change in the wind"
"Then I won&039;t worry about Haiti anyin with you, you must be sure to win"
"So crossbows like those your ape-ainst the Whisperers than spears" Valentine walked a the to Jacques Their conversation ood-bye in trivia
Narcisse arrived with an assorts of provisions, and a chest full of Haitian spices "Fried plaintains, fried pork, a bag oflids and pointing with herwhile, fresh and dried Now the spices-" She contin-
ued checking over the contents of her baggage like aon a hostile shore
"I&039;d have never left that cell if it weren&039;t for you, Nar-cisse"
"And I&039;d still be getting stains out of Boul&039;s underwear We help each other, blanc"
He stepped on to one of the Thunderbolt&039;s launches, Nar-cisse once again riding in her place on his back, and as it left the beach Valentine felt sadness, and some relief Relief at the fact that he found on Haiti what he spent over a year getting to, and sadness in saying good-bye to soto help hied by the potted trees lashed everywhere on the decks The old Thunderbolt looked like a floating forest
The launch hove alongside, and Valentine climbed aboard and reported himself present to the alley, where she sniffed suspiciously at the Ja in celebration of leaving Hispaniola
Valentine went up on deck and watched the preparations for departure Theup, and a last few sailors and marines came out to the ship with the Haitians There were friendly exchanges of cotton ducks for pigskin utility vests, earrings for copper bracelets, and so on over the side of the ship There would have to be a strict search for s rid of lice and bedbugs which undoubtedly hitched a ride from the shore But Valentine could leave those details to Carrasca and her s were ready to fight if necessary
The last lap He needed to get the ship to the Texican coast His superiors would handle the rest; he would be back to being a cog in a larger s Would he miss the taste of inde-
pendent co on his oas a banquet of endless servings of stress and headaches, but the freedom added spice to the dishes
Thankfully, for this last voyage he would not have to turn into Captain Bligh on the Bounty and ask his crew to sacrifice for the cargo The saplings were hardy enough to survive the short trip across the Caribbean, assued diesels held out, without taxing the ship&039;s freshwater resources After the challenges of the latepotted saplings
Ahn-Kha again quartered his Grogs in the forell deck, their old tentage replaced by a grove of quickwood plants, their crossbows and pikes stored below, shotguns and rifles cleaned and put away in the ar the bunks of thesouvenirs acquired on the island, hung upon bunk and locker Hispaniolan voudou charentle motion
He returned to the deck for a last look at Haiti The reen that the color deserved a richer word to describe it, stood out against the azure blue of the sky and the argent blue of the Caribbean waters below It was an island of extrehter and despair, freedom and slavery But from this island that had known an almost endless series of sorrows for the past six hundred years, a neorld could spring
Narcisse&039;s dishes made a superb dinner, once the cook and his mate let her take over supervision of the alley busy, and treated Post and the rest of the Thunderbolt&039;s ht fell after an easy day&039;s duties- made the men lively
"How&039;s life in the Ozarks?" a stout corporal with a stand of red hair asked "I&039;ve heard the winters pass hard"
"Irish, I know a lot of stories get passed around the Kurian Zone about that," Valentine said "There&039;s enough to eat Sometimes it isn&039;t what you&039;d like as a first choice, or even a second, but we don&039;t starve You&039;ll find out there&039;s a lot of ways to cook chickpeas, and you&039;ll get sick of dried fruit, I can promise you that"
"Women?" Hurst called, and thewe&039;re not short of Fact is, there&039;s so many, you&039;ll find a few in uniform There are a lot of lonely s, too, which makes a man think, but if any of you have a mind to be a second husband, you&039;ll have your pick We&039;ve got schools, roads, there&039;s a ga whorehouse or two on the Lake of the Ozarks Being an officer and a gentleman, I wouldn&039;t know details, naturally"
The men snickered and passed around comments under their breath, like kids in school, and Valentine heard Car-rasca&039;s narowled
A shout echoed froainst the ship&039;s hull, a grinding jar that had everyone reaching for a table or a bunk brace to steady themselves
"Va silent Valentine listened with hard ears, trying to shut out the bleating alarm, and heard the icy shrieks of Reapers
"My God, they followed us!" Post said
"Take ar!" Valentine shouted He didn&039;t have so much as a knife on him
"Quickwood, anyone have sorabbing rifles and shotguns from the beckets in the wall of their quarters; a corporal coolly gave out bullets as the men took arms fro up to him with two of Post&039;s screw-in pike-points A screaunfire
"It&039;ll have to do"
"Post, take Wilde and his tea else, I don&039;t care if she&039;s on fire, get that weapon manned Irish, you and the rest of the e Hand me that machete, Torres"
Post shoved a speedloader into a heavy 44 revolver with a trened men
"Marines, you see a Reaper, shoot until it&039;s down if you can They&039;ll have the advantage up close like this Let et its head off, or stick it with the quickwood If I catch it, get up to Post Any more wood down here?"
"Here&039;s a pike," another said
"Take the tip off-it&039;s too hard to use on the pole Ignore any wounded, don&039;t pay attention to anything, we go to the bridge Noith ht&039;s chaos Valentine rushed out into the next co up to the h the doorway and tripped, but the rest jumped over him and up the stairs in a steady stream
The compartment above opened onto the deck from doors on either side of the ship, and Valentine led hiscollision If he could just get thehtened individuals, the ship ht stand a chance The deck door on the collision side swung open, and the uns
"Wait!" Valentine rasped, holding the flat of the blade of the ainst the man behind him "It&039;s Owens"
A sailor made it in and slammed the door shut behind "They&039;re everywhere-we have to get below," he said